Detective Silva says she did an NCIC offline search of police dispatch logs and found out that Chris' van was pulled over in Georgia the day prior to the attack, but that kind of information would not be available through the NCIC. The FBI's National Crime Information Center maintains a database of national crime statistics and information, an offline search is when law enforcement needs information that can't be acquired by using their online search engine, the information is manually searched for by an NCIC agent. However police departments do not upload their dispatch logs to the NCIC, nor would there be any information in the database about a traffic stop that didn't even result in a ticket. Only information about actual crimes is uploaded to the NCIC and unless it's a major crime like rape or murder there is often a delay of weeks or months between a crime being reported to local police and them uploading the information to the database, most law enforcement agencies simply don't have the time or manpower to upload non-urgent crime reports right away.
Chris and Ellie live in Los Angeles and are only in Rockland County, New York, because they're taking a weeks-long cross-country road trip. Despite the couple living in Los Angeles, both Ellie's college roommate and Chris's mother live close enough to Manhattan that they can come in and be interviewed in person and that they have a house nearby, respectively.
If Ellie were originally from New York or if she went to college there, one would assume it would be mentioned. Instead, all these characters just happen to be locals, yet there's no mention of Chris and Ellie stopping during their trip to visit either her best friend or his mother.
If Ellie were originally from New York or if she went to college there, one would assume it would be mentioned. Instead, all these characters just happen to be locals, yet there's no mention of Chris and Ellie stopping during their trip to visit either her best friend or his mother.